


Country Roads

by katsukifatale (TrumpetGeek)



Category: Mimi wo Sumaseba | Whisper of the Heart
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Busking, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Italy, Travel, Voyagezine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrumpetGeek/pseuds/katsukifatale
Summary: Shizuku loves to write.She loves to write, loves it with every fibre of her being, every cell in her body. Even when she doesn’t.—Struggling travel writer Shizuku meets a cute busker on the streets of Cremona, Italy and all hell breaks loose.





	Country Roads

**Author's Note:**

> first of all thank you to [@voyagezine](http://voyagezine.tumblr.com/) for allowing me to participate in their project! i had a lot of fun writing for a movie that is very near and dear to my heart. the zine is full of some really talented people so be sure to go check it out!
> 
> second of all, hello! this is my first time dabbling in the ghibli fandom. if you enjoy this fic please let me know!

Shizuku loves to write. 

It’s both catharsis and escape, beautiful for the freedom of it. Like she can just pick up a pen or set her fingers to the keyboard and measure out bits of her soul to fill the blank pages. Whatever she wants, whatever she feels — the bitterness of a family that struggled to support her, the desire and drive to plow ahead despite it, the strength that buoys her and the weaknesses that swallow her up — it’s all fodder for the pen.

She loves to write, loves it with every fiber of her being, every cell in her body. Even when she doesn’t.

Writing is part of her. She’s always done it and she always will, probably. The words are inside her and sometimes she feels full to bursting, but other times… 

“I know a little something about feeling stale,” her editor had told her. “It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, if you always do the same thing. Sometimes you just need a break.”

  
  


Shizuku had tried to protest, then. Writing isn’t boring — nothing about the experience is ever  _ boring _ . But her editor had given her a look that closed her mouth for her, steel gaze over the rim of her glasses like she could see into the heart of Shizuku. In that moment, Shizuku had had to accept that dry, dusty taste in her mouth and the back of her throat — that empty cavern where the words used to be, the numbness in the tips of her fingers where there used to be such an itch.

  
  


“Why don’t you travel? There has to be somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. You never know, sometimes you find inspiration in the places you forget to look.”

  
  


Shizuku had thought about it that night, mulling over the words in her mind for hours, remembering her editor’s sad smile. 

  
  


Seeing that blank word document behind her closed eyelids. 

  
  


The next morning she’d called to confirm, and a few days after that she’d been on a flight to Cremona, Italy.

—

There’s little better than drinking Italian coffee in an  _ actual _ Italian coffee house, Shizuku thinks. 

It’s not as though Italian coffee or coffee houses are difficult to find elsewhere. There are plenty of little Italian coffee houses in Tokyo, tiny little things that somehow manage to always be packed in spite of the overwhelming popularity — and prevalence — of fan favorite Starbucks. The Italian coffee craze is practically as old as time and will probably never fall out of favor. The ones in Tokyo — they’re small and cramped, filled to the brim with hip college students with their pasokons needing a quick caffeine fix.

Shizuku doesn’t hate Japan’s version of Italian coffee houses, or Starbucks. They’re efficiently run, clean and quiet, everyone keeping to themselves.

It’s just that it’s nothing like the real thing.

She stumbles into a little coffee house on a cloudy afternoon, quite by accident, exhausted and blurry-eyed from staring at her empty word document all night long, desperate for anything with caffeine. She struggles her way through sounding out ordering a caffe normale because she’s not a heathen and refuses to order a cappuccino after 11am even though she has to spend several long and embarrassing moments squinting at the menu, and when she puts her mouth to the lip of the mug and gets her first taste she wonders if she’d accidentally stumbled into heaven instead.

The coffee tastes rich and smooth and strong, beautifully dark. After the first warm sip settles, and she can feel the liquid energy suffuse her, she chances a glance around. Instead of the quiet, smooth energy of the coffee shops she’s used to, this one is lively. Most of the patrons are gathered together at the bar, their fingers hooked through the handles of their mugs — actual ceramic mugs, not plastic or reinforced paper. They chat and laugh together over a flow of faint violin music, and the afternoon sun filters in through the undressed windows and the open door. Shizuku’s hands tighten on her mug; there’s a familiar itch building in her fingertips.

She savors her coffee and wonders if this is what her writing has been missing.

—

(It’s not. Her document remains as white and blank as freshly fallen snow.)

—

It only takes a few days to see everything Cremona has to offer. 

It’s a truly beautiful city, full of light and sound and narrow, cramped cobblestone streets. It’s much less-visited than Florence or Venice but still has a lot of the charm and wonder, and Shizuku really appreciates the freedom to wander and get sucked into whatever catches her eye without fighting crowds of tourists. The unfortunate thing is that Cremona is small and not as equipped for tourism as some of its neighbors, like Milan or Genoa. 

All of that to say, after visiting the Museo Violina and the Museo Civico ala Ponzone and the cathedral, there’s just… Not much to do. Not enough to inspire.

(That blank word document has begun to haunt her dreams).

Shizuku gets desperate enough to try different coffee houses, hoping that the different atmospheres inside and outside will jumpstart the thing that lies dormant inside her, but it doesn’t work and the coffee isn’t half as good as the first place, so she gives up and slinks shamefully back.

The barista recognizes her, which is both lovely and a little embarrassing. He takes pity on her and saves her from more humiliation and terrible butchering of the Italian language by speaking to her in lilting english. Shizuku is so grateful her knees shake. She takes the caffe normale and the biscotti she’d pointed to — bless him, he’d given her the exact one she’d wanted, with the extra thick chocolate dip on the end — and goes to sit at one of the cute little outdoor tables for a change of pace. It’s a nice day; the sun is peeking out from behind fluffy clouds, and the temperature is perfect for the cute summer dress she’d pulled on that morning. There’s even a man playing the violin across the street. His music is sweet and melodic and...floaty. His eyes are closed and he moves his body slightly to the beat of the music he’s creating. It looks like he’s enjoying himself, and it makes her smile to watch him.

Shizuku rummages around in her bag for her notebook, and somehow manages to find her favorite pen. It writes nice and smooth and doesn’t leave black smudges on her hands when she hurries through her kana. She flips the notebook open and sets the nib of her pen to fresh paper and sighs.

It’s all small blessings, but sometimes if you can manage to string enough of them together, you can turn them into something that matters.

(If only she could do that with words.  _ Ugh _ .)

Two-thirds of the way through her second cup she decides to take a break. It’s not like she’s managed to do any actual writing — only a few sentences not worth keeping and some doodles of anime characters in the margins. She breaks her biscotti in half and dips one of the crumbly ends into her coffee. Just as she sticks it into her mouth, a shadow falls over her table and someone makes a considering noise from very close by.

“‘She reached up as if to grab a star. Maybe then her wish would come true’.....huh.”

Shizuku squeaks and the biscotti falls out of her mouth and directly onto her lap. She stares at it forlornly as it leaves behind a little coffee stain on its way to hitting the ground and bursting apart in a spray of crumbs.

“Oh wow, sorry!” a cheery male voice says from somewhere above her. “Didn’t know you were so clumsy. You know it’s considered an affront to coffee to dip your biscotti into it, right? It’s meant to be dipped into vino santo, as a dessert.”

She finally looks up from the catastrophe that used to be a solid white dress and squints at the man standing next to her. To her surprise, it’s the man who’d been busking. He’s holding his violin and his bow in one of his hands. She opens her mouth to tell him that his playing had been beautiful.

Then his words register.

“ _ Excuse _ me? Don’t read my writing! Just who do you think you are?!” 

The man blinks, and then shifts his instrument to his other hand and sticks out his right. Shizuku takes it automatically, feeling his calloused, warm palm against hers.

“My name is Seiji and I  _ think _ I’ve been living here for a while, so I know the food etiquette better than you.”

“Shizuku. Who raised you? A wild boar?”

The man throws his head back and laughs. “I like you, you’re funny.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Ouch,” violin man —  _ Seiji _ — says, staggering back and clutching his free hand over his heart. He mimes a dramatic death and Shizuku rolls her eyes.

“Goodbye,” she says pointedly. 

Seiji grins down at her with sparkling eyes. “Okay, Miss Shizuku, I can take a hint. Until we meet again.” 

He backs away for a few steps, still smiling, until he turns around and goes back to his empty violin case resting on the sidewalk. Shizuku bends her neck, looking down at her notebook to hide her traitorous smile.

—

“Fancy meeting you here, Miss,” a now-familiar voice says. Shizuku can practically hear him grinning.

“Oh yes,” she says dryly back. “ _ Shocking _ .”

This is the fourth time they’ve met at the coffee house in as many days. At first Shizuku had thought about changing coffee houses. It was a little unnerving to look up and meet Seiji’s gaze, see his jaunty little wink that made her want to stomp away. Even more unnerving to realize she’d started to enjoy his conversations during his breaks from busking. He’d come sit at her table, waiting patiently if she was in the middle of writing something and didn’t want to lose her thoughts. He’d smile and tease and talk about how much he loved music.

His enthusiasm was captivating. It made her want to be like that, too.

Seiji laughs at her stunning display of wit, and the sound even prettier than the sounds he makes with his violin. It makes Shizuku’s cheeks flush, and she ducks her head to keep him from noticing.

She’s been doing that a lot over the last four days — thinking about him, noticing these things about him. Once, she’d even forgotten to drink her coffee because she’d been so caught up in just watching him play. She’d had to gulp down cold coffee before she could get another cup. It’d been so embarrassing! And icky! Cold coffee dregs are no joke!

But…

He makes her laugh. 

He makes her  _ laugh _ , and he listens to her, and he’s passionate. He’s  _ so _ passionate — about music, about traveling, about animals. About self-expression, and art, and literature, and following dreams.

He makes her laugh now. He’s settled gracefully in the seat across from her, talking about his grandfather back home and the little cat statue called The Baron that he keeps in his shop. It’s a cute story, and Seiji’s gestures are big and wide; he fills up so much space.

It’s nice.

—

“How goes the writing?”

He asks this on the ninth day they meet at the coffee house. He’s asked this every day since he’d rudely read her terrible writing over her shoulder. Shizuku still doesn’t have an answer for him.

“I don’t really know what i’m doing anymore, it’s like there’s an empty well inside.” She says it quietly, hoping he won’t pick it up over the thrum of voices and the ambient sounds of the coffee house. A private confession. For a moment she thinks she’s managed it; he orders them both their usual caffe normale, the Italian words sounding much nicer than any of her terrible attempts. His voice is gentle and low, and she can’t help but watch the way his hand fits around the mug he receives from the barista. It’s the same calloused hand that holds the bow of his violin so delicately.

He leads them both to an outdoor table —  _ their _ table, at this point, if she’s being honest. He sets his mug down and looks at her so seriously.

“You know Cremona is famous for music, right?”

Shizuku nods. That’s one thing she’s picked up during her stay here.

“There’s an old master violin-maker here. I’m trying to save up money to become his apprentice. It’s been hard. I’ve had to leave my family and friends behind in Japan, and I’m not very good at speaking Italian.”

“Oh, i’m sorry,” she starts, but he just smiles at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling, like he’d expected her sympathy. 

“ _ I’m _ not. Your dream… You have to chase it down relentlessly. When the well is empty of water, there’s no choice but to find another way to survive.”

Seiji touches the back of her hand with gentle fingers and looks straight into her eyes.

“I want to make violins. What do  _ you _ want to do? What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?”

Shizuku thinks for a moment, tracing her memories all the way back to high school, and her first novel, and what it had felt like when the words had poured and poured out of her, almost violently, and how her pen had run out of ink but she’d still had more things to say.

Ten years ago, it’d felt like freedom; ten days ago, it’d felt like a burden.

She turns her hand palm up, curls her fingers around Seiji’s, and smiles.

Maybe somewhere along the way, she’d lost direction. But she’s a big girl, and she knows how to read a map.

(It’s all fodder for the pen, after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> you can find me at @katsukifatale on tumblr, twitter, and pretty much any other social media haha.


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